An ugly contest...

You know how Regis and Kelly do a beautiful baby competition? You send in the cutest picture you have of your baby and think for sure you'll win because the other 399 million babies that will enter the competition could not possibly be as beautiful as yours. I've been looking through some old pictures and thinking I should start a Ugliest Baby Picture competition. Holy moley. Or, as Jake used to say, "hohwee mohmee" some of these pictures are bad. I mean really bad. I'm posting these so that all you other parents out there with kids not nearly as cute as mine (usually) are, will be encouraged that even those adorable Stump kids are sometimes...hideous.

Jake's ugly collage. Wow. I've got this competition in the bag. Top to bottom, left to right (like reading, hmm)#1 Looking into the sun, and evidently trying to hide his lips. #2 17 days old and looking like an old man. An old, very bored man. #3 Attempting to smile, but just being ugly. #4 Never again will I let Dan near Jake's hair. #5 Slimy newborn, need I say more. #6 Futilely practicing the "hey baby" look. #7 Seriously. #8 Vomit on the face of a child, priceless. #9 Green snot is not really photogenic.

Ty's ugly collage. Are you sick to your stomach yet? #1 Afraid of the camera...or maybe just a case of rice-cereal-phobia. #2 Again, newborns are not cute. Ever. #3 Snapped right after the best picture ever taken, deciding one cute pic is quite enough for today, thank you. #4 Usually it's nice to see even one small piece of your child's face in a photo. #5 Yep, that's my baby. Sorry. #6 I tried to get a picture of the rash he had on his face, and you can't see how ugly the rash is because of how ugly the child is. #7 Coughing, and guaranteeing himself a top prize finish in my contest. #8 Why I started blogging AFTER Ty's early months. #9 Praying he would grow into his enormous head.


My favorite Ty ugly picture. The face only a mother could love.

Grown-up time!

We went to the beach this last weekend. The kids stayed home.

I'll rephrase that--the kids stayed "home" at both grandparents' houses (one night at each). I suddenly got a vision in my mind of the day we can actually leave our kids HOME, meaning our home, without supervision for a whole weekend. I'm picturing 16-year-old Jake washing and waxing his new Dodge Ram truck he's been saving for his whole life. I'm picturing 15-year-old Ty trying to help big bro, but ending up tripping over the hose and gashing his head on the driveway. Jake rolls his eyes because Ty still has stitches on his forehead from an incident last week. Jake grabs the keys and they head to the ER. They pull into the parking lot and Jake is now furious with Ty for bleeding all over his new truck, and while Ty is staggering in to the ER, Jake grabs a bottle of Windex and a rag from the glove compartment and goes to town.

We may be taking a lot more family vacations than I anticipated.

So back to the beach. We had such a great time. We went with three other couples, and it was so wonderful to have some full uninterrupted conversations that never started with "look at my eyes" or ended with "because I said so." We went to the Tilamook Cheese Factory and had 210 samples of cheese (we went through the line a few dozen times) and ate insanely delicious ice cream. We roasted s'mores on the beach and Vergil impressed us with his marshmallow roasting skills, and Kelsey impressed us with her idea of using Reeses peanut butter cups instead of plain chocolate. Yum is an understatement.
The guys built a pretty impressive sandcastle and we took a pretty impressive amount of pictures of it. We ate fish and chips and clam chowder at Mo's (I'm not a seafood gal, but their chicken strips are to die for.) We slept on air mattresses in the living room and laughed until we cried and until we wanted to shoot ourselves because of how late it was. So much for a restful vacation, but boy was it worth it.


Eric and Megan, Natalie and Paul, Vergil and Kelsey...
thanks for
an incredible weekend!

Busy, busy, busy

Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything interesting. We've been busy since Dan's last day of school. Jake's been busy playing with hot wheels and learning that though sharing doesn't seem very fun, it really is the right thing to do. Ty's been busy attempting to get more bruises on his head before the other ones have a chance to heal. Dan's been busy on ESPN.com salivating over the upcoming NBA draft, and thoughtfully doing dishes and playing Mr. Mom when he notices that I'm about to kill the kids. I've been busy working more and busy running the dryer with a pen in my scrubs pocket and busy cleaning out the resulting ink stains in the dryer and busy figuring out how to get ink out of half our clothes that ran through the dryer with said pen.

As I said, busy, busy, busy. But busy doesn't mean that we're not having any fun. We (the kids and I) have loved having Dan home for the summer. A few nights ago, Dan and Jake bought a tent and set it up in the backyard and camped out. I could hear Jake from inside..."What's that noise, Dad? It was car, I fink, no maybe a truck. What kind of truck? Probwee a Chevy. Is it a Chevy Dad, or a Ford? Maybe a Toyota? I think it was a Nissan. Yep, a Nissan. Like Poppy's..." and on and on. They didn't fall asleep for quite some time, but they made it until 6:30am.

Today we went out to lunch at Marie Callendar's because I had a birthday coupon that expires on Saturday. The coupon was for $5 off my entree and a free piece of pie for everyone who ordered. That included Jake, so we decided to let him get a piece of french apple. Um, have you seen the size of those pieces of pie? Seriously like 1/4 of a pie. Jake at the WHOLE thing in like 2 minutes flat. He kept thinking we were going to take it away from him, so he was inhaling it. By the time he was finished he had goo dripping off his face and crust up his nose. We were getting stares from the people across the aisle. They may have disapproved, but Jake is nominating us for Parents' of the Year.

Thanks Marie, for taking our minds off of our ruined clothes, dirty dishes, bruises, and sharing issues. Now if we can just get Jake to go to sleep tonight after all that sugar...

Things a 1 year old is not yet able to do:

#1. Feed themselves yogurt without supervision.

#2. Stand on kitchen chairs and bend down to pick up a toy.

#3. Tell their brother it is not okay to spray their head repeatedly with Windex glass cleaner while mom is in the other room.

26 years old

Today is my birthday. As I'm writing this, I have a pointy hat on, a party blower in my mouth, birthday cake frosting on my face and my computer is covered in streamers. Just kidding. Birthdays are sure different when you get older, aren't they? Dan has parent/teacher conferences tonight, so we had to celebrate my birthday yesterday evening after I got home from work. This is what I saw when I got home:

I couldn't have asked for a better present. My two adorable baby boys telling me they love me, and a thoughtful husband who made me dinner and gave me some awesome creative presents even though I'd given him no ideas. My birthday lists used to be 23 miles long and included a pony and a life-sized stuffed animal, but now I just want money for some new clothes and a new kitchen strainer. (Ty broke the last one pretending he was the drummer in a garage band.)

But I wouldn't trade 26 for 6 any day. I have experienced so many of God's incredible blessings in my short life, and it makes me excited for birthdays to come. Thank you to my little family for making me so proud to be your wife and mom.

God's little boy

The combination of working a lot lately and dealing with a kid at the peak of his terrible twos is what has been keeping me off the blogosphere for a while. I just had to share this story, though.

For the last two weeks or so Jake has been pushing the limits. Let me rephrase that. He's been wildly flinging himself over the limits and laughing in my face as he does it. I've never thought of him as a maliciously disobedient child, but I have begun to see glimpses of pure defiance, and it is not pretty. For example, we just got a brand new exercise bike that we're keeping in the living room. We told Jake he wasn't even allowed to touch it, much less play on it. The day after Dan assembled it I was in the kitchen doing dishes and Jake calmly walked in and said "Mom, I just broke the ekercize bike." You what? "I just BROKE the ekercize bike." And sure enough, the ekercize bike was indeed broken. He had actually ripped the console off it's stand, breaking off a piece of plastic that held it in place. He had to have been hanging on it. I thought about hanging him from it again.

There are many more stories that end with Jake screaming at me for disciplining him "don't spank me, mom" "don't send me to my room, mom" "stop punching me in the face, mom."

Ok, so I'm being a little dramatic, but he has really been pushing my buttons. Today I was trying to put him down for a nap and I asked him to go potty before we started the nigh-night routine. He started whining, then shrieking "no potty, mom, no potty" and he actually threw himself on the floor crying. He was really tired, which made it worse. I told him I wouldn't read him his book unless he went potty. Then I thought about the book we've been reading before he goes to sleep, both at naptime and bedtime. It's called "God's Wisdom for Little Boys" and it's a bunch of Proverbs put into little poems, and Jake just loves it. Because we're reading it so much, I thought he may remember some of it. There's a poem about obedience, and I started to quote it, "God teaches children that they should..."

"obey" Jake whimpered. He started to walk to the bathroom. "rules of udders, do ut day say" (the rules set by others and do what they say) "God's little boy no usseptions (God's little boy makes no exceptions) "he minds and fawows anections" (he always minds and follows directions). He quoted it again as he was on the toilet and again when he walked back to his room.

I couldn't help but smile. I'm so proud of God's little boy. And of the authors of this book for turning my whiney snotty nosed kid into a poetry quoting, potty loving angel.

Saturday to remember

Mine is a life truly blessed. My family is amazing: a husband who loves me and makes me laugh, two of the worlds cutest kids, in-laws that couldn't be greater, a sister I admire, a mom I respect...and a dad who hooks me up.

Dr./Rev./Mr. Randy Alcorn (Pops) recently met some members of the Christian rock band Third Day at an event he was speaking at in Atlanta. The bass player Tai Anderson had read some of his books, and they had some great conversations both there and later by phone and email. The best conversation they had included an invitation to a concert at the Clark County Amphitheater this past Saturday. Free tickets. 4 rows back. Dead center. It gets better. Toby Mac performed before Third Day. Ha-ha-heavenbound, I was going to marry him some day. But wait, it gets even better still. Backstage passes. Dinner with the band before the concert. Oh yes, and during the concert, a song dedicated to "some great new friends, the Alcorn family."

Dan stayed home with the kids and missed one of the best nights in recent memory, so I got to take my friend Melissa (happy b-day!!) who, besides being my chapstick sister, is now my best/only gomer sister. (Huge Third Day fans are called gomers. I really don't know why, and might not ever want to.)

Dinner was truly unforgettable. Not just the fried zucchini. It was so great to see these guys as who they really are...not just rock stars, but true men of God who are genuinely seeking His will for their lives. Plus they were funny. Melissa and I jokingly asked where the Hummer limo was to take us to dinner and Tai said, "Well we used to have one, but then we read the Treasure Principle..." Darn that book.

So thank you Pops for being the kind of man that rock stars want to hang out with. And for letting me tag along. You may not have the incredible voice of Mac Powell, or the moves of Toby Mac, but you are my own personal rock star.

And thank you Third Day for staying true to what you believe in, and paying for my delicious bacon cheeseburger.

My new best friends. Mark Lee, Brad Avery, Mac Powell, Tai Anderson, and David Carr.

We also saw that 42 year old Toby Mac is as cool as ever.

...as a jay bird

Keeping you updated on our kids: Ty's favorite thing is being naked. Jake's favorite thing (besides cars) is messing with our digital camera. Hence the fuzzy naked picture. And as you can see, my favorite thing is NOT cleaning my living room.

Ain't nothin but a hound dog

Dan and I are a lot alike in many ways. We're not the couple that has one spender and one penny pincher. Neither one of us is super outgoing or painfully shy. We both say "potato" and "tomato" like any normal American. But we have one major difference: I am a dog-lover and he is a dog-hater. When we got married neither of us assumed this would be a problem. He knew we'd never have a dog, and I knew I would talk him into it someday.

That someday is upon us. We've made a deal.

Dan has been begging me to let him buy a plasma TV since they first came out, and I've simply been pointing out that we already have a TV, 2 TV's in fact, that work just fine. But I realized recently that if I gave in to buying a plasma TV, he would have to give in to one of my requests. Plasma=dog.

It probably won't be until next summer when we move to a new house and the boys are a bit older, but it's most likely going to happen. The other night we were online looking at which dogs Dan would approve. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of options. Does anyone know of a dog that doesn't shed, drool, bark, or ever get sick and preferably hunts for its own food so we don't have to ever buy any? He doesn't want a big dog inside, and I say if you have a dog, what's the point of keeping it outside all the time.

I'm posting pictures of two of my favorites. They're both "hybrid" dogs which sounds better than "mutts" but people are breeding them on purpose because they're so cute and have great personalities. Tell me what you think!


This is a Mauzer, a Maltese/Mini Schnauzer mix.

This is a Beabull, a Beagul/Bulldog mix. (We call Ty "beebs" as a nickname and it sometimes turns into "beeble," so it might be fun to have 2 Beabulls in our house) I should do another posting on the nicknames we call our kids and how they came to be. The nicknames, not the kids.

More babies!!!

No, we're not pregnant again. Just wanted to be clear from the very beginning.

Dan's sister Jane is expecting her first baby, and we are so excited for her and her husband Curtis! They live in California right now, so we're bummed we're not going to experience all the firsts with them. But keep emailing me, Jane, and be sure to take those pictures, like Faith does, of your cute little belly popping out each month.

These first pictures of the boys as newborns remind me of all the crazy emotions you have looking at your child for the first time. Excitement, overwhelming love, and also a bit of fear.

Looking back at these pictures, the fear I felt was probably not that I wouldn't be a good mother...it was that they might look like that forever. Don't worry, Jane, they're all a little scary when they first come out!
Slimey Jake...probably trying to guess what kind of car he was going to go home in.

Gooey Ty...not sure about this whole "outside the womb" thing.

From the mouths of babes

People keep telling me I'm going to forget a lot of the crazy things Jake says, and I'm starting to believe it. I had forgotten until a few weeks ago that for months he called milk "nun" (one of his first words.) He is saying so many words correctly that it makes it that much funnier when he mispronounces words, so I've got to get them written down before they're lost in time. Here are some of my favorites:

That bwankie keeps me yohm (warm)
Mommy works at the hos-uh-pull
I go potty on the toh-toht, then mommy wipes my bahbahn (bottom)
baa-bwees (batteries)

Moving on to some of his favorite foods:
Nohgle bar (granola bar) which used to be "bee-a-bah"
So-wul (cereal)
McDon-dawnts, also sometimes called "McDarnits" which always makes me laugh

And after eating so much food, it's time for:
Ek-er-cise, ek-er-cise (yells it as he's doing jumping jacks)

And when we're out of food we go to:
Maw-mawt (Walmart) or
Fred Meh-mo

As you can tell, life for a two and a half year old boy pretty much revolves around food and the toh-toht. Probably not going to change any time soon, either.

Wedding weekend

Once again, it has been too long since I've posted, but it's not because I'm a slacker it's because I've been SOOOO busy with wedding plans. Yes, Dan and I have finally decided to...just kidding. Our wedding was official, I did remember to send in the license almost 6 years ago, don't worry.

My childhood best friend Heather got married on Sunday night to a wonderful man, and I couldn't be happier for them. But the weeks ahead of the wedding were crazy, and I'm so glad (for everybody) that it's over and most of all that it turned out so beautifully!!

I had a blast with the other bridesmaids, most of whom I don't get to see very often. There were 6 of us...her two sisters Joy and Karen, me, and then Melissa, Melissa, and Alissa. Gotta love those lissa's.

Now Heather and Steve are enjoying a cruise to the Bahamas, and I'm enjoying wiping peanut butter off my couch and snot off my kids. Life is officially back to normal.

Boys, boys, boys...and more boys!

Congrats to sister Karina and Dan Franklin who just found out yesterday that they're having a boy! She's due August 31, and though there is still no pink in the Alcorn grandbaby collection, we are SO excited for you guys!! Jake and Ty were wrestling yesterday (Ty is holding his own very well) and I was so thankful for the blessing of brothers. With an older brother and 2 older boy cuzes, this kid has no choice but to be tough. Plus, you won't have to blow your budget on clothes!!

Here's a recent pic of the 3 boys with "Pops" (Jake's newest favorite word).

Walking and falling

Ty is walking! He took his first steps weeks ago, but now he's REALLY walking. I should have posted this last week when I took the video, because he has already drastically improved. Every day he spends more time on his feet. He looks a lot less like Frankenstein, though he still waddles and holds his hands out for balance.

It is much more obvious now how many toys are constantly on the floor. Our living room is an ever changing obstacle course. Learning to walk does create more independence...but also more bruises. It's amazing how quickly a bruise can heal, but more amazing how quickly another one can appear!!

12 months...

...the age of discovering how food makes it to your mouth.

1 year old Jake

1 year old Ty

Mmmm...peas

Well, if it's not one thing, it's another. I think Ty's ear infection is gone, but last Wednesday he started to break out in a rash from his 1 year shots. His doctor said this may happen because they added a chicken pox vaccine to some of the usual ones, and kids have been having "minor" rashes. Um yeah. Minor is not quite the right word. In fact, it's not minor, it's MAJOR. It was the worst on Saturday and I'm not exaggerating when I say he looked like a freak. I mean scary. His entire little face was polka dotted bright red, and the rash was head to toe UGLY. It was sad. Since I am an ER nurse and I know all...I called the doctor. I knew it was a reaction to the shots, not hives or anything dramatic like meningitis, but he just looked so darn freakish I needed to know if there was anything I could do to help him. Pretty much, no.

All that to say he's been a little needy and grumpy the last few days, but it's looking better. He slept for over 4 hours yesterday at nap time. Yes, auntie Jane, I did check on him to be sure he was breathing :)

He hasn't been wanting to eat, so I was really happy the other day when I put some peas on his high chair tray, and he was just mowing them down. I was making dinner and every time I turned around his tray was empty. I'd put more on there, thinking "yeah, he's finally got his appetite back." This is what I found when I got him down. He may not have looked pretty, but he was clever.



Nice try, dude. He ended up eating them all.

Spring break!

Happy spring break everybody! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Ty's been sick with an ear infection, and life has just been really busy. And I didn't have anything exciting to say. ANYWAY.

Dan was so excited about spring break when he got home on Friday that he decided to spread the joy and have a slumber party with Jake. They made a "bwankie foht" (blanket fort) in the living room and had some great male bonding. I was surprised it lasted all night, but they were both still snoring when Ty got me up at 7:30.

Oh, another big moment in the life of our 2 1/2 year old. His first daddy haircut. Not a haircut like dad's, but a haircut given by dad. The excitement of spring break made daddy eager to do something drastic. So he buzzed. We're talking as close to completly bald as you can get. I was horrified half way through the process, convinced we had ruined our handsome little boy, but I have to say that once it was finished he actually looked pretty cute. He's such a dude. He said "woooo" and laughed when we put him in front of the mirror. He'll say "I like my hair, Mommy" and then the next minute he'll rub his bald head and say "where's my hair go? Want my hair back pwease."

It'll be back soon. Until then, those long dark curly eyelashes look even better.

Tyler Daniel

Happy birthday to my sweet baby! I can't believe it's been a year since you were living inside me, seemingly never going to come out! I think back to the time I asked myself if I could love another baby as much as I love your brother, and then I remember the tears that overwhelmed me the second your gooey little newborn body was placed in my arms right after you were born...I can't imagine my life without you. You have put us through some rough nights, and some delightful days. You've cried, and you've laughed (and we've cried and laughed.) I've been exhausted and energized by you. But through the good and the bad, you have truly been a gift from God that we love more deeply than we ever could have known. We can't wait to see the plans God has for you, and yet I am really enjoying where He has you now...your chubby little arms wrapped around your mommy's neck and your head resting on my shoulder.

Thank you God for our beautiful baby. Protect him, guide him, and never let him forget how much he is loved.

Ok, tears are dried.

We had a great party today, thanks so much to everybody who could come! It was so fun to see friends and family and eat lots of great food (including the cupcake cake that was supposed to be a basketball that ended up looking more like a football, but that's alright, you can tell that Ty got over it.)



It takes a lot of work eating that much frosting. Exhausting, but good times.

PARTY!!!

A reminder to some, and an open invitation to all: Ty's 1st birthday is this Saturday, March 10, and we would love you to come celebrate it with us at John and Ann Stump's house from 10:30am to noon. (Email me at dastump@verizon.net for directions if you need them.) We'd love to see you and have you share this special day with us!!

Picture happy

We're housesitting for my parents this weekend, so I broke in to my dad's computer in order to share with you, dear reader, the best recent pictures of my boys. Poppy Ha-corn loves to take pictures, especially of his grandkids, and who can blame him? I was so excited to go through his pictures to pick out some of my favorites! It was a grand idea, and then I started the search. Though many of his pictures are great, the key word here is MANY. I have to say that after scrolling through 93570210 pictures (because "what's the down-side?" of that many pictures) I can't even tell anymore which ones are my kids, much less which pictures are the BEST. Anyway, I'm pretty sure these pictures are good, and that they are indeed my kids. I've been so bad at using my camera lately, so I'm glad someone is taking the time to capture some great childhood moments. Thanks, Poppy.



Besides being the highlight of Jake's young life, this is a stroller that you can either push, or pull behind a bike. Good buy, Poppy.



This is a classic capturing the difference in the personalities of my boys. Jake is the fun-loving, mischevious showboat, and Ty is my thoughtful one, constantly pondering the mysteries of life (right now it's "when's dinner?")



Hands-free phones are a must for busy 2 1/2 year olds these days. How else would they get anything done?



One of my favorites. The tweaked hair is a Ty special, and those eyes... I love you too, baby.